Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 6.011 June 9, 1996 1) Buenos Aires, two years after the bombing (Part 1) (Zachary Baker) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 7 Jun 1996 21:36:02 -0500 (EST) From: yivo1@metgate.metro.org Subject: Buenos Aires, two years after the bombing (Part 1) This past Tuesday (June 4th) I returned from a ten-day trip to Buenos Aires, as a follow-up to my earlier visit there, in late November 1994. The latest trip was organized by Bradley Berman, curator of traveling exhibits at the Judah L. Magnes Museum (Berkeley, Calif.), and was made possible through funds provided by the Peter Gruber Foundation, with a grant given in honor of Eduardo Elsztain of Buenos Aires. The immediate purpose of the visit was to conduct a survey of 67 oil paintings, watercolors, and drawings by the Polish Jewish artist Maurice Minkowski (1881-1930), belonging to the Argentine branch of YIVO (known by the acronym IWO in Spanish) and having miraculously survived the July 18, 1994 bombing of the AMIA building, in which IWO was housed. Our three-person delegation consisted of James Bernstein, a prominent San Francisco conservator of modern paintings, Brad Berman, and me. Jim Bernstein coordinated the examination of the Minkowski paintings, and enlisted Brad and me to assist in various technical capacities. (As an experienced photographer, Brad took many of the pictures that will be used in analyzing the physical state and conservation needs of the Minkowski artworks, and as a librarian I organized much of the record-keeping.) Our work was greatly facilitated by our hosts, Moishe Korin (president of the Fundacion IWO's board of directors and head of the Argentine Va'ad ha-hinukh [Jewish Education Council]), Abraham Lichtenbaum (director of IWO), and Ester Szwarc (head of IWO's library and archives). Thanks to their help, the work at hand was successfully completed and we were able to establish contact not only within the IWO circles, but among Argentine art conservators, journalists, and (akhron-akhron-khoviv) philanthropists. _Why Minkowski?_ After my 1994 visit to Buenos Aires, a couple of questions came to mind: (1) How can we help IWO rebuild its shattered library and archives? (2) What can be done to ensure that the memory of the July 18, 1994 bombing of the AMIA building -- in which at least 86 individuals lost their lives -- not be erased from memory? It will take some time for both questions to be answered satisfactorily. (1) IWO has conducted some emergency fundraising, and libraries abroad have supplied useful reference books, in response to pleas for assistance. Much remains to be done in that area, but for the time being the bulk of IWO's surviving library and archives remains packed in boxes and stored off-site (IWO is currently based in the Kultur-Kongres building, at Ayacucho 483), awaiting the day when the institute can move back into the reconstructed AMIA building (about that, more in Part 2). A crew of volunteers, under the guidance of Ester Szwarc, is sifting through the collections, the major effort to reconstitute the IWO's research and circulating collections and make them accessible appears to be a couple of years down the road. Nevertheless, material and financial assistance toward this ongoing effort is welcome. (2) Over the past two years, Jews have endured a number of traumatic terrorist incidents -- of which the Hamas suicide bombings earlier this year in Israel are the most recent bloody examples. But in certain ways the bombing of the AMIA stands out -- in terms of the number of lives lost, the target itself (the Buenos Aires equivalent to the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies, with other charitable and cultural organizations housed alongside), and the strong sense that the culprits will not be searched out and that justice will never be served. Yet that terrible act -- which came on the heels of the bombing of the Israeli embassy in Argentina, in 1992 (with close to 30 fatalities) -- is in danger of being forgotten by all but those who were closest to the scene itself. Maurice (Maurycy, Mauricio, Moishe) Minkowski was once a famous painter in Jewish art circles. His images of Jewish suffering in the wake of Russian pogroms and of traditional Polish-Jewish scenes (especially the religious and domestic lives of Jewish women in Poland) were widely reproduced and exhibits of his artworks were held throughout Poland, as well as in London, Berlin, and Paris. In style he was closer to the realistic painters Maurycy Gottlieb and Samuel Hirszenberg than to his avant-garde contemporaries, Marc Chagall and Chaim Soutine. But after his death, this once-renowned artist faded into oblivion. Still, his paintings are found in numerous museums and private collections, the world over. By a quirk of fate, IWO in Buenos Aires probably possesses the largest single collection of artworks by Minkowski. The artist, accompanied by his wife and brother, arrived in Buenos Aires during the late (southern hemisphere) winter of 1930, in order to mount an exhibition of his pictures at a local gallery. About three months after his arrival, in late November, Minkowski -- a deaf-mute since early childhood -- stepped out into the street and was fatally struck by a car. (This is not necessarily to imply that those in full possession of their hearing are immune to traffic accidents of this sort -- especially not in Buenos Aires!) Minkowski's death was front-page news; the Jewish Daily Forward, for example, ran its obituary -- together with the artist's photo -- right below the masthead. Photos of paintings by Minkowski appeared in that same issue and in the Forward's Art Section, the following Sunday. (If nothing else, this attests to the fact that reproductions of Minkowski's pictures resided within the newspaper's photo morgue.) Another newspaper report that I have read states that after Argentina Minkowski and his entourage (plus his pictures) were to have continued on to Brazil and New York, returning from there to Warsaw, and ending up in Palestine. In any event, the tour was aborted in Buenos Aires, where the pictures that Minkowski brought along with him remained until about ten years after his death, when close to 70 of them were acquired by IWO. Together with Neil Zagorin, of the National Yiddish Book Center, I first encountered these pictures as they being cleaned by an Argentine art conservator on November 22, 1994, almost exactly 64 years after Minkowski's fatal accident. (I was familiar with a black-and-white album of Minkowski's works, published by IWO during the 1950s, but had never seen them up close and in color.) The drama of the scenes depicted in them and the circumstances under which their restoration had been suddenly rendered necessary were the impetus behind the trip which has just been completed. Upon my return from Buenos Aires, at the end of 1994, I communicated with colleagues in the Jewish museum world about what I had seen there, and a report that I wrote was circulated by the Council of American Jewish Museums. Shortly after the July 18, 1994 bombing of the AMIA building, the Judah L. Magnes Museum, in Berkeley, California -- its staff being aware of IWO's collection of Minkowskis -- brought out from storage its two paintings by that artist and put them on display, in a symbolic act of solidarity with the victims. About six months later, in connection with another project, Brad Berman was visiting YIVO on behalf of the Magnes Museum. There we discussed the notion of a project connected with restoration of IWO's Minkowskis. The aim of the still vaguely conceptualized project was -- and remains -- that a traveling exhibit involving some of the restored pictures might eventually take place; that the reputation of a once famous but now forgotten artist might thereby be restored; that the public at large would be reminded of the terrible consequences of the AMIA bombing; and that IWO's role as custodian of Argentina's Jewish and Yiddish heritage would be recognized and celebrated. A Minkowski exhibit and catalogue could serve as reminders of an event from which the Argentine Jewish community has yet to recover. The groundwork has been laid for further progress on this project. The staffs of IWO in Buenos Aires and the Magnes Museum in Berkeley are carefully considering the next steps, in what promises to be a series of tasks that will take years to complete. Each task, once completed, will bring the parties concerned closer to the goals just enumerated. In Part 2 of this report I will focus on my experiences in Yiddish Buenos Aires during this recent trip. Zachary Baker ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 6.011 Mendele has 2 rules: 1. Provide a meaningful Subject: line 2. Sign your article (full name please) Send articles to: mendele@yalevm.cis.yale.edu Send change-of-status messages to: listserv@yalevm.cis.yale.edu a. For a temporary stop: set mendele nomail b. To resume delivery: set mendele mail c. To subscribe: sub mendele first_name last_name d. To unsubscribe kholile: unsub mendele Other business: nmiller@mail.trincoll.edu ****Getting back issues**** 1. Anonymous ftp archives are available. ftp ftp.mendele.trincoll.edu in the directory pub/mendele/files A table of contents is also available, along with weekly updates. 2. 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